Many Things

I don't have enough time to organize this post, but here's what's going on at Chez Bloom:
Miss I. slept through the night last night, awoke with the sunniest disposition, and was a joy for most of the day. She also napped for two hours, which gave me

Playtime with ds. We played the March of the Penguins-inspired board game he invented himself months ago. Journey to the ocean and back. Tomorrow we are going on a date - alone - to see Monster House. Reviews are great, though anyone with a child under five considers it frightening. Those with kids over five said the ending is satisfying and resolves those fears it generated. Words like archetypes and catharsis have been used

so I sent dh to the movies by himself tonight to preview it. He hated to sacrifice our time together, since it takes a lot of work to make that time (I work a ft job in pt hours - so guess which hours I try to cram it into?) but I really think he needed a date with himself, too. That fact is easy to overlook when I've been home all day with the kids and am ready to hand at least one over when he gets home. I should be using this time productively, to buy us another evening later

but I'm blogging and ruminating and thinking less seriously about what we will wear for family pictures tomorrow. In eighth grade we "pictured" our future lives in a collage. Mine included a career as writer and artist, a gazebo, a springer spaniel, and a curly-haired daughter (why I would ever have imagined that, considering my straight hair, I don't know) and son in a sailor suit. Dh always insisted "No sailor suits," long before the arrival of our actual children. But my mom got us great outfits for ds and I., navy and white stripes, and I'm struck by the similarity of my life to that picture - yes, of course, and more importantly, by the wonderful differences I could never have anticipated at 13. (Miss I.'s alone picture will be in a Chanel-inspired pink dress with black and white accents.)

and finally, in the most personally revealing post I've ever written (don't read if easily disgusted): I have ring worm on my arm and I can't get it off. I contracted it from my daughter's scalp. After failed attempts at topical treatment, we are both on oral medications for a long time.

And now I understand those tantrums: the humidity makes it a thousand times itchier. You know how when you have a blister you can think of nothing but your foot? This is worse. It makes you hateful, makes you plan dramatic ways of removing it or removing the arm.
The good news is, the oral meds have 100% cure rate - just doesn't say after how long.
Hope it doesn't show up in the family picture.
Because I have to tell you, that wasn't in my collage.